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MOSCOW, January 30 - RAPSI. A court in the British Virgin Islands has unfrozen $131.7 million belonging to St. Petersburg Bank Chairman Alexander Savelyev, the bank said on Monday.

A two-day hearing in the court on the dispute between St. Petersburg Bank and the Oslo Marin Group (OMG) ended on January 25.

"The court held for the bank and Savelyev," the bank reported.

Mass media earlier reported that the court had seized Savelyev's assets in November as interim relief in a lawsuit filed by businessman Vitaly Arkhangelsky, his wife and OMG against St. Petersburg Bank, Savelyev and 15 other companies allegedly involved in the hostile takeover of OMG's most valuable assets.

Arkhangelsky's OMG was based in St. Petersburg in 1990 as an insurance company, but later switched to freight traffic. OMG operated three cargo vessels and was engaged in timber sales in the Northern Europe.

In 2009, OMG announced the shutdown of its subsidiary, the Vyborg shipping company, amid the global financial crisis. OMG's creditor, St. Petersburg Bank, managed to win a court order to seize the company's vessels in Estonia, France and the UK. The Russian authorities charged Arkhangelsky with fraud in absentia and issued an arrest warrant for him.

French media said Arkhangelsky has been living in Nice for three years and calls himself a victim of the bank rather than a fraudster. He requested France for political asylum in July but, has not yet received a response.

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